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Tara Brach's Dharma Talks
Tara Brach
A pervasive but often invisible source of suffering in our culture is self-aversion. We are a busy culture, and we move through our life feeling anxious and dissatisfied, but not fully conscious of how we neglect or judge our inner experience. We suffer from a lack of belonging: to our own bodies, to each other and to the earth. When we practice Buddhist meditation, we learn how to listen deeply and hold our life tenderly.
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2020-07-15 The Sacred Art of Listening 48:41
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Just as presence is the heart of meditation, so deep listening is at the center of all conscious, loving relationships. This talk explores how our wants and fears block listening, ways we can deepen our capacity for listening, and the healing that unfolds when we truly feel heard by another (a special talk from the archives). What happens when you’re really listening?
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-07-08 Meditation: The Space of Loving Awareness 18:21
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This meditation begins by guiding us through a scan: opening to inner space and aliveness, then to outer space, and then continuous space, filled with the light of awareness. We explore how every experience belongs to this infinite awake space of our Being, and can be held with tenderness and love.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-07-08 The Heart Crosses the Abyss - Three Inner Trainings 49:11
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In the moments when we either resist or get possessed by our strong emotions, we are in a trance, and cut off from openhearted awareness. This talk explores the truth that “it’s not what’s happening, it’s how we’re relating.” We look at three key trainings that help us relate to difficult emotions with a wise and compassionate presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-07-01 Meditation: Calling on Our Inner Bodhisattva 21:11
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We each have within us the very source of wisdom and love. This meditation calls forward that essence, our awakening heart, so we can seek guidance and nurturing for the parts of us that need a healing attention.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-07-01 Shame, Healing and Transformation 48:43
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Being at war with ourselves blocks us from evolving our consciousness and living from our hearts. This talk distinguishes between toxic and healthy shame, as well as shame about our individual self and our group identity. We explore how, with self-compassion and courageous honesty, we can respond to negative, painful feelings about ourselves in a way that serves awakening and alignment with our deepest values.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-06-24 Meditation: Body and Spirit 19:21
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As we relax and awaken through our physical body, we discover the formless dimension of awareness or spirit that permeates all of life. This meditation includes a poem from Mary Oliver.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-06-24 Spiritual Hope 52:53
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Spiritual hope opens us to possibility and energizes us to manifest our potential for love and wisdom. In contrast to attachment or egoic hope, which is the grasping for what will benefit a separate self, spiritual hope arises from trust in the openhearted awareness (bodhichitta) that is always and already within us. This talk explores how, as individuals and as a society, we can nourish spiritual hope, and create the grounds for healing and radical transformation.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-06-17 Meditation: Embodied Metta 19:35
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Lovingkindness becomes full when it is energetically experienced in our bodies. This meditation guides us in awakening the receptivity, warmth and openness of metta through our body, and then invites us to rest in the space of loving presence, as we open to whatever arises.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-06-17 Sustaining Our Caring 39:45
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All transformation arises out of love; it is the energy of caring about life that moves us toward inner, relational and societal healing. With a primary focus on our radically re-enlivened movement for racial justice and equity, this talk looks at ways of remembering what matters and consciously nourishing our care.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-06-10 Meditation: Inner Refuge of Calm 21:09
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In times of great stress, it’s crucial that we have pathways to quiet our minds, relax our bodies and rest in a calm, steady presence. This meditation guides us in using the breath, body scan, and a home base of presence to find that inner refuge that can carry us through difficult times.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-06-10 Meditation: Meeting Anger with Awareness 15:15
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When anger is held in mindfulness, it can energize us to respond wisely to challenging situations. This meditation guides us in meeting personal or societal anger with RAIN – recognize, allow, investigate and nurture. [NOTE: this meditation was given at the end of Tara’s Anger and Transformation talk on 2020-06-10. A brief context is given, then the meditation begins at 4:56.]
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-06-10 Anger and Transformation 49:21
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The purpose of anger is to let us know there’s an obstacle to our wellbeing, and to energize us to act. While natural and necessary for survival and thriving, this powerful energy often possesses us and leads to suffering. This talk explores how we can use the RAIN meditation in our personal and societal life, to meet anger with a mindful, compassionate presence. Freed from the identification with a limited, separate reactive self, we can listen to the message of anger, draw on the purity of its energy, and respond from our natural intelligence, creativity and care.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-06-03 Meditation: Homecoming to Wakeful Presence 20:04
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This meditation begins with us standing in mindful movement, guiding us in awakening awareness in the body. Then in sitting practice, we open all our senses, resting in the wakeful presence that can include the changing waves of our life.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-06-03 A Courageous Presence with Racism 38:13
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Anti-Black racism is the core wound of American culture, and we each have a role to play in fighting racism, a medicine to bring to these times. This talk explores how we can offer an honest and courageous presence to key domains of this suffering. We then look at affirming that Black lives truly matter with our dedicated and wise action.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-05-20 Meditation: The Art of Letting Go 19:15
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Letting go means releasing the resistance we have to experiencing the present moment. This meditation guides us to let go of the thoughts that block our immediate sensory experience, the tension in the body that reduces aliveness and the armoring around the heart that dulls our sensitivity and tenderness toward life itself.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-05-20 Embracing Uncertainty: Sheltering in Love - Part 9 44:57
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How we tolerate uncertainty - during current times and throughout our lives - has a powerful effect on our capacity for presence, aliveness and love. This talk explores the conditioned ways of reacting to insecurity that contract us, and pathways of letting go of resistance, opening to Beginner's mind and discovering a timeless, wise and loving presence in the midst of inevitable change.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-05-13 Meditation: Living, Embodied Presence 22:32
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This practice begins with a full body scan and then guides us to return again and again to our senses. What we find is a dynamic presence, a Hereness that feels like home. The meditation ends with a beautiful poem by David Wagoner called, “Lost.”
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-05-13 Sheltering in Love – Part 8: Finding Freedom in the Midst of Failure 45:56
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Everyone faces personal failure, and it’s an extremely raw and painful feeling. If we have the courage to stay with the feelings, failure can become a portal to the realization of who we are beyond the imperfect separate self. This talk calls on Samuel Beckett’s wonderful quote (referenced by Pema Chödron), “Fail, Fail again, Fail better,” and offers guidance on finding freedom as we move through some of our most difficult moments.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-05-06 Meditation: Openhearted Presence 23:25
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This meditation guides us in embodying loving presence through a body scan, and then meeting whatever arises with a tender heart. We close with a beautiful blessing-poem from John O’Donohue.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-05-06 Sheltering in Love – Part 7: Awakening from the Prison of Blame 43:14
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A key way stress disconnects us from ourselves and each other is through the limbic reactivity of blame. This talk helps us to recognize the suffering of chronic blame, resentment and anger, and to bring a healing presence to the vulnerability that underlies blame.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-04-29 Sheltering In Love (Part 6): Loneliness as a Portal to Sacred Presence (Part 2) 51:05
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The root of suffering is the pain of separation, the fears and loneliness that arise when we have forgotten our intrinsic belonging to each other and to all of life. These two talks look at the epidemic of loneliness predating the pandemic, and how loneliness is exacerbated in our current global crisis for those living alone, and for those feeling disconnected to themselves and others. We then explore how a courageous practice of compassionate presence - with our inner life, and in relationships - can turn the energy of loneliness into a current of healing and freedom.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-04-29 Meditation: Vipassana - Seeing Life As It Is 27:36
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This classic Buddhist meditation trains us to wake up out of thoughts and to attend to our changing experience with a balanced, clear and open presence. Enjoy a bit longer meditation with several quiet pauses.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-04-22 Meditation: Relaxing Back into Natural Awareness 27:08
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In this meditation we are guided to discover the space and aliveness that fills the body, sense the space in the universe, and then to realize our Beingness as continuous space, filled with the light of awareness. When our attention contracts into thoughts, the pathway to awareness is a relaxing back, reopening to the natural openness, silence and stillness of our true nature.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-04-22 Sheltering in Love (Part 5): Loneliness as a Portal to Sacred Presence (Part 1) 44:51
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The root of suffering is the pain of separation, the fears and loneliness that arise when we have forgotten our intrinsic belonging to each other and to all of life. These next two talks look at the epidemic of loneliness predating the pandemic, and how loneliness is exacerbated in our current global crisis for those living alone, and for those feeling disconnected to themselves and others. We then explore how a courageous practice of compassionate presence - with our inner life, and in relationships - can turn the energy of loneliness into a current of healing and freedom.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2020-04-15 Meditation: Refuge in Sacred Presence 22:29
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Our experience includes a foreground of changing experience - sounds, sensations, feelings, thoughts. In the background is an alert inner stillness, the awareness that is our true nature. This meditation guides us in opening to the moment-to-moment flow through our senses, and learning to relax back to inhabit the mystery and vastness of awake awareness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC

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